she walks in beauty
by paper piper
Summary: i want you all to myself. -shinji/rei/asuka


A/N: not based on the Rebuild, haven't seen them yet. also, not in chronological order from the series.

A/N: bringin' the love triangle. i'm a reixshinji gal myself, but i like the idea of a love triangle too ;)

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**She walks in beauty**

_/I want you all to myself./_

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They clung to each other—the three Children, and children they were.

One, a boy: slim and sensitive, terrified, with dull, weary eyes, arriving with the world begging for his help.

Another, fiery red and wide open, a ball of energy and rage and confusion; she is a creature born and bred of madnes_s_.

Third, a shadow of a human, pale and silent and searching, searching, searching for something, anything, everythingto make her real.

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_/I see you./_

She spotted him before anyone else—saw him arrive with heavy sighs. Shinji sat on the train that took him to her, staring straight ahead at the land passing beneath him, earplugs blocking him from the rest of the world.

Her first thought was, _why is he so silent?_

His silence was not like his father's. Dr. Ikari had a seething silence, a moving silence, a silence that disapproved. But Shinji's silence was silent. She could not tell his basic feeling: Is he excited? Nervous? Angry? She squinted her eyes at him, trying to understand. He had another world in his eyes.

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_/How could I ever leave you alone?/_

Oh, God. She was barely breathing, and Shinji felt the world fall out from under him. The image would stain his memory—the picture of a woman, no, a girl, lying strapped to a hospital cart, bandaged over her eyes and her legs and her torso and her arms—the picture of a broken doll.

Rei tumbled straight into his arms when the world lost its mind, and he held her to him like the child he was, shaking, shaking, shaking—but, _reality really sucks, I want to leave, I want to run!_—

He stood and piloted the Eva anyway.

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_/I need you to look at me./_

Blue eyes, red hair, and a smile—oh, she was lovely. Like a flame, seductive and dangerous. She alighted into their world with brash confidence and zeal. _I can do this, I can do this, I can do this,_ she cried. And she did—she grabbed the controls out of his hands and threw herself into the thick of the battle, right where he did not want her, right where it was most dangerous, right where she knew no fear. Shinji watched her with wide eyes, _how could any one person conquer the world the way she does?_

The cheeky bitch, she only winked before punching him in the arm and calling him a fool.

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_/You look like poetry./_

No, no, no—he didn't mean to! But there he was. In her apartment, body hovering over hers, on the floor.

Rei was naked and sprawled open and staring and oh so _naked_. And beautiful. As if some benevolent god had fashioned her out of his own hands, simply to make something pleasing to the eye. A Venus of the here and now, all pale skin and gentle, sloping curves, and oh, that sweet little neck, and the way it connects to her shoulder—

"Ikari."

He got up, blushing like a little boy.

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_/Fuck me, now./_

"Hey, wanna kiss me?"

She said it like they were discussing the weather. Asuka at the kitchen table, one knee drawn up, her head resting on it, splashes of bright hair falling down her back. Like a river of fire.

Shinji blinked. The answer—the answer—_Yes! Oh God, kiss me now, kiss me before I pass out, before I grab you and throw you to the ground—_

But when she touched her lips to his, before he could feel the swell of desire rise in him, she was away, complaining about his technique, the minx.

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_/You get under my skin./_

"Pussy," she hissed at him when he turned the other cheek. Asuka watched the way Shinji glanced over his shoulder at her, at Rei, that doll, that bitch, that creepy woman—and her heart colored up like her hair. She was a hurricane, she was too much, much too much, too much for any mere man to bear.

Oh, but could she deny the way she latched onto him, though she had promised herself _never, never, never again, no, not again, no more disappointment, no more fear_—Asuka watched Shinji. Watched him while criticizing him, because there was so much wrong with him, with the way he dressed, his little high pitched voice, the little-boyishness of his person—and dammit! Asuka wanted a man! A man to still her and chill her and make her sweaty and loose—but Shinji was all she could think about, Shinji and his stupidity, Shinji and his cowardice, Shinji and—and—and—

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_/You get me high./_

Her eyes were red, red like Asuka's hair, and Asuka had blue eyes, blue like Rei's hair. They were antitheses to each other—fire and water, and he the earth, the medium.

Rei's eyes were half-lidded, Asuka's glared: Shinji did not know where to look.

Sometimes, he had these dreams, too. Nasty ones. The kind of dreams that make you wake up, sweaty and gritty and ashamed—dreams about pale breasts topped with red eyes in front of him, in his arms, panting and whispering—_Shinji, Shinji_—and of the tips of red hair brushing his shoulders behind, with clever hands all over, all over—_you naughty boy_. And Shinji felt so powerful in their arms, listening to them moan and squirm under him, above him, all around him—oh, he was drowning in those red and blue eyes and hair and lips and arms and legs. And when he saw them in life, he thought he could taste their skin on his tongue.

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_/You're the only thing I know./_

"This is all I have."—when she said it, she meant it, but suddenly Rei knew the statement was not quite correct. She went to battle, not intending to live, not feeling her nerves and entire being screaming for _life, for life above all!,_ because it did not matter. This was all.

Then, then it was over. She was dying, she knew she was dying. Her personal pod lying in a vacuum, she standing before eternity—

But the door was opening! The door was opening, and Dr. Ikari was coming back for her again, to rescue her—

"Shinji." His name was a question: Why? Why are you here?

But he was begging her, _please, just smile, Rei!_—oh, she knew, she knew that something else was happening.

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/_Don't get so close to me_./

The elevator was a cursed thing. Asuka could not stand to be in there with any other people (save maybe Kaji). She couldn't listen to their attempts to make small talk, or to look quietly away from her when she was standing right there. Shinji would stammer something and look away, while she mocked him—_what an idiot_.

Ayanami was infuriating. Stood there, dumb as a rock, staring at the door, her shoulders relaxed, in her goddam uniform! Get some real clothes, for God's sake!

"Bitch," she muttered under her breath, "can't even speak like a human being."

What she didn't get most of all was, why did Shinji even talk to her? Why did it matter? Asuka hated questions. Her life was made of statements, and she wanted an answer.

But none came. Rei just stood there. Stood—like a doll.

"You're an empty vessel!" she cried. Her fists were shaking, but Rei wasn't even looking at her. "You don't have feelings, or thoughts—I doubt you even have a pulse!"

_I have a pulse. I have feelings and thoughts and a soul. What are you?_

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/_I have to have you now_./

There was urgency where there was not before. Shinji felt their pull on his life—where time was slow and steady and sturdy before, now it was rushing forward and backward and stopping entirely and there was never enough of it!

When he looked at Rei, he knew he saw a figure standing still in time. Her face was always turned away, looking at something else—his father! Was she sleeping with his father? Oh, god, if she was with his father, with that crooked, angry, hard old man—with the man who had abandoned him—well, she might as well have abandoned him, too.

But then—then—she turned back around.

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/_I'd crawl to you if I had to._/

Rei did not have to think about it. She would die for him. Come pain, come nothingness—hell, she knew nothingness already. The Angels could not take Ikari. She knew, somewhere, in the recesses of her being, that the Angels could not have him, and the reason was connected strangely to her gut. Rei doubled over in torment whenever the thought occurred to her—_Shinji cannot die_.

So she gave up. This was all she had. This was correct.

She surrendered her body to the flames, to the sound of her name on his lips.

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/_Burn me up._/

Asuka's hair was like flames spun into silk. He liked the feel of it against his face, on his neck, in his fingers.

Once, she fell asleep at the kitchen table, in her little sundress, her face in the crook of her elbow. Her hair splayed all over the place, everywhere—red running round and round and round. He couldn't help himself; he stopped and stared, then shuffled his awkward legs toward her.

"Asuka?" he called her name until he was sure she was asleep. Asuka was a light sleeper, though, so he was gentle when he reached out with trembling, clumsy fingers and touched her hair. He ran it through his fingers, and allowed himself a sigh of satisfaction. _Like silk._ It was magnificent.

Then he shuffled away, smiling to himself like a little boy with candy in his hands.

She opened her eyes, and her cheeks were flaming.

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/_Don't leave me. Ever_./

He visited her in the hospital. How many times had he sat at her bedside? Too many for him to count, and he could not stop himself from going again.

Shinji was quiet and still by her bed, but his eyes were riveted on her form. Rei was lying in a rigid line, hands by her sides, facing upward, tubes and needles and bandages all over her. She was still; she had been still for so long.

"I can't believe you did that for me," he whispered brokenly. "You did that for me." And his voice cracked when he spoke, because he was choking, choking on the sensation of being loved. Though he might murmur _why_ over and over again, he could never arrive at an answer. There were no answers, no answers anywhere at all. Only that gut feeling, that terrible, ugly, awful thing in the center of himself, the: _Please, stay. Stay with me._

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/_You're the only one_./

_Die, all of you, for being so beautiful. _

They clung, and clung, and clung—three Children, bound by love and hate and rage and confusion and emptiness—all things bright and beautiful and terrible.

_I could die of love._

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fin.

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A/N: review, folks. FEED ME.


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